We compared Zabbix and Pandora FMS across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:
Features: Zabbix is highly regarded for its user-friendly interface, scalability, and reliable performance. It provides customizable dashboards, trigger dependencies, SNMP monitoring, and problem tracking. Pandora FMS is highly regarded for its straightforward management process, effective dashboards, and efficient network monitoring capabilities.
Room for Improvement: Zabbix could reduce false positives and improve integration, cloud monitoring, and reporting. Users say Pandora FMS could make its dashboards more customizable and improve its integration with other systems. Many also said they would like Pandora to add APIs for integration and offer better out-of-the-box analytics.
Service and Support: Users had mixed opinions about Zabbix customer service. Some found it helpful, while others feel it needs improvement. Customers generally rely on online documentation and community forums for assistance. Pandora FMS support received high praise for their expertise, kindness, and fast response time.
Ease of Deployment: The complexity of Zabbix's initial setup varies, and it may require an experienced group of administrators and engineers. Most users found Pandora FMS’s initial setup to be relatively easy.
Pricing: Zabbix is a free, open-source solution, but users can purchase support services and additional features. Pandora FMS is considered reasonably priced, and the total cost depends on the environment.
ROI: Users say that Zabbix provides a cost-effective solution. Pandora FMS has also demonstrated advantages in terms of return on investment. Users say Pandora FMS has also demonstrated a return on investment.
Comparison Results: Zabbix is a highly customizable open-source solution with a wide range of monitoring capabilities, including the ability to monitor virtual machines and databases. However, Zabbix’s setup can be complex and may require technical expertise. Users like Pandora FMS’s management and monitoring capabilities as well as its dashboards, but the solution has been criticized for its compatibility issues, limited customization options, and slower performance
"We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"The single dashboard is a valuable feature."
"It is easy to create your own custom modules if you just know a little bit of scripting. If you have unique requirements, you can just make your own modules. You can even grab checks from other vendors. There are open-source checks for various things such as SMTP, etc. There is a long list of different ones from Nagios. You can just use them, and within seconds, you get yourself a check that is monitoring whatever you need. It is really flexible. I guess that's why they call it Pandora Flexible Monitoring System (FMS). It is reliable. It does the job, and it alerts. It is also surprisingly feature-rich. Our network guy just recently asked about a particular protocol to monitor the bandwidth on the network, which is not a common protocol. When I looked it up, and I found that they cover it. It is very mature for a not-so-known product."
"You can configure several types of architecture for high availability or load balancing."
"The solution is so lightweight that with only 4GB of ram, it allows keeping track of up to two hundred agents from a single console."
"The administration of the console is very easy. I like that Pandora FMS is interactive and easy to manage."
"This product has allowed us to identify and correct certain issues that were affecting our solution."
"Features I have found most valuable with Pandora are the personalized metrics and the simplicity of data."
"Pandora's architecture is interesting. It's open so you can easily extend and enhance it. It's simpler to customize Pandora compared to other solutions. It's also scalable enough to support large environments."
"Pandora FMS provides us with a general report (graphical) about all of the connected devices, which helps with planning new stations and tracking them."
"The performance and bandwidth are valuable features."
"The solution is open-source, easy to manage, and user-friendly making it easy for anyone to use."
"The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration."
"It is a great product. The SNMP protocol tracking feature is good. I really like how it tracks SNMP. The alerts are also great."
"The most valuable feature is the alert and alarm monitoring."
"The most valuable feature is that it provides network segregation for server monitoring."
"We use Zabbix to monitor our organization's IT infrastructure and workstations. We don't use Microsoft Intune since it's expensive. The tool's real-time alerting system has proved crucial for us, particularly when a new device joins a network that is not one of our own devices. It notifies us about the presence of this new device, allowing us to investigate further. Additionally, it alerts us about disk usage, memory usage, and the software installed on the machine."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and the ease with which we can set it up at customer sites with our custom Zabbix proxy and tools."
"The technical support needs improvement."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"We would like the real-time monitoring of an interface to be improved within this solution."
"Their support is good, but it is just online communication. It would be great to be able to just call someone and talk to them instead of always writing. It works well for me because I am a decent communicator in email, but some people might find it difficult to describe in a written fashion and communicate with them that way. There is a learning curve to the interface, but once you get used to it, it is actually very powerful. They have a lot of options, but people struggle with the interface. They've improved it though, and it is getting better. They need to keep improving the learning curve to help buy-in. I'm the guy that manages it, so I'm comfortable with it. They can refine the upgrade agents to be easier. They can also do more refinement in end-user usability because not everyone is strong technically, and people who aren't strong technically might be averse to the product, even though it has come a long way. It has a complete GUI and everything."
"Improvements are needed for server and network discovery, including service-based discovery."
"It would be helpful to include the generation of reports for times that the network was out of service."
"A nice feature in the next release would be an automation module to run workflow actions."
"It would be useful if Pandora FMS included an ISO image (or «software appliance») for each big company that leases virtual private machines (VPS), just like in AWS."
"Pandora FMS is relatively new, and the interface with the older version crashes at times. We have several different operating systems, such as Linux and Windows, and Pandora does not run as well in these."
"I would like to have a dashboard with all assets displayed, with a quick hover-over status."
"If Zabbix had a better dashboard then it would be nice."
"There are a lot of areas for improvement, specifically in the dashboards and reports functionalities."
"We had some scalability issues with a large number of nodes."
"The reports are not great and should be improved."
"There are some features of Zabbix that are not good for reporting. The DX Spectrum solution has better reporting."
"We would like to see the addition of automatic push functionality to this product. This would save time when monitoring our servers and networks as, at present, we have to manually install the Zabbix agent on any hardware to be monitored."
"The System Center Operations Manager can be improved."
"Zabbix isn't a great tool for cloud-specific monitoring - its connection to public clouds needs to be improved. Other areas for improvement would be the lack of dashboards and integrations."
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Pandora FMS is ranked 28th in Network Monitoring Software with 22 reviews while Zabbix is ranked 1st in Network Monitoring Software with 101 reviews. Pandora FMS is rated 9.2, while Zabbix is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Pandora FMS writes "The open architecture is easy to extend and enhance". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zabbix writes "Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes". Pandora FMS is most compared with Wazuh, PRTG Network Monitor, Nagios XI, SolarWinds NPM and Netdata, whereas Zabbix is most compared with Centreon, Checkmk, SolarWinds NPM, Nagios Core and Nagios XI. See our Pandora FMS vs. Zabbix report.
See our list of best Network Monitoring Software vendors, best Server Monitoring vendors, and best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors.
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